Our Name Is a Killing Word

Embrace the Weirding Way.

A note from guest author Le Grognard.

Many people pan David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 classic, Dune. Yet, with Dune in the zeitgeist again thanks to Denis Villeneuve, perhaps there is some wisdom to be taken from this science fiction classic. Recently the discourse has revolved around a particular attack on the Right in general and Trump and Vance in particular — namely, that they are “weird.” Admittedly, I greeted this line of attack with a chuckle. One would think that this line would work on a lunch table of high school girls and not the world’s preeminent power. Yet it resonates with the media classes, for some reason or another. Upon further reflection, it brought to mind that 1980s Dune movie and the power of the Weirding Way.

We must, of course, make distinctions to the novel. In the novels, the Weirding Way is a martial art, where mastery of mind and body allow the warrior to move with preternatural speed. Such speed allows the master of the Weirding Way to move around his opponent’s attacks in order to strike at precisely the right spot. In the film, however, the Weirding Way is transformed into a weapon, where sound and form are turned into a great destructive power capable of breaking, in the film’s case, unbreakable pillars of stone. Certain sounds carry the power of destruction, and the hero Paul Atreides intends to teach the lowly Fremen of these ways to allow them to retake their world and the Known Universe. Yet, in a training scene, one of the Fremen warriors utters his secret name, known only to the Fremen, Mua’dib. The Weirding Module echoes the name and vibrates with power, blasting a hole in the wall of the training room. In an interior monologue, he remarks, “My name is a killing word. They are ready to fight.”

We are at a similar moment, even if we do not recognize it. Our enemies do, even if we do not. For the better part of the last half-century they have jealously guarded the power of the weird. From psychedelic rockers, punks, homosexuals, and trannies, they have embraced what we might have called weird, an army of the fringes pushing against normality. Their “weird” had a pseudo-profundity, perhaps drawing on New Age beliefs or their conviction that they were on the “right side of history.” With their power, they have attempted to enshrine this weirdness as the new normal; yet doing so has sapped it of all of its power and profundity. As it turns out, propping up the unnatural takes a great deal of effort and other people’s money. Perhaps more intangibly, it takes a great deal of spiritual energy, and who could say that our enemies have that in abundance? John Lennon’s “Imagine” isn’t coming; this was a false message to begin with.

The name of Trump is a killing word. Like Paul Atreides, he did not choose this. I do not believe that Trump is the “Man of Destiny” that we hope to arrive. Yet, there is great potential energy inherent in our system. Like a boulder that has been rolled up a great hillock, it takes little energy to set it upon a course back to ground level. Push back, friends. Embrace the Weirding Way.

Paul Atreides’s greatest enemy, in novel and films, is not the dysgenic freaks of House Harkonnen, nor the fanatical legions of the Imperial Sardaukar. It is, ironically enough, the Great Longhouse of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood. For thousands of years they plotted, twisting the bloodlines of men to produce a messiah, the Kwisatz Haderach. Perhaps more lore is needed here. The Bene Gesserit, an all-female order with great mastery of their bodies and minds, are able at the highest levels to access the genetic memory of their female forebears. Yet, there is a great domain that eludes them. Lacking a Y chromosome, they cannot see into the minds of the men of their past; but the Kwisatz Haderach, a man, would be able to do so. They thought that their schemes would allow them to control this power, but they were wrong. The masculine, in its penultimate form, was not a power that they could control.

Take heart, friends. You may think of Herbert as like his contemporaries of 1960s science fiction, but he was a reactionary in his own way. He believed in human potential, but rather than a hippie, egalitarian vision, he presented in his novels something more profoundly human. Noble houses bred for millennia to rule — orders like the Mentats, Ginaz Swordmasters, and even the Bene Gesserit who master mind and body — showing that the potential within all of us is locked behind will and spiritual understanding. As Dave the Distributist will remind you, this is a war of belief.

Only in belief is our name a killing word.

“Your time has come.
A storm is coming, our storm.
And when it arrives,
it will shake the universe.”

– Paul Atreides

Ya Hya Chouhada!
(Long Live the Fighters!)

Signed,

Le Grognard Kelber
1st August 2024